Collingwood’s cat killer saga no more than age-old hysteria

Andy MacDonald/Stuff

Gerard Hindmarsh says allegations of a cat killer in Collingwood resemble a witch hunt.

Opinion: Rumours of a cat killer in Collingwood certainly seem to have taken the small town by storm.

Accusatory Facebook posts, a map of the town with only the houses of suspects marked, a reward poster of $5000 for information leading to an arrest, trail surveillance cameras installed and tracking devices attached to pets.

Totally out of control.

The main perpetrator of the accusations claimed in the latest news report to know exactly who did it, but just can’t prove it.

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Yeah right!

I showed all the facts to an anthropologist for an overview, who was quick to suggest the small town accusations closely resembled the build-up to the Salem Witch Trials in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693.

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A map has been distributed around Collingwood, showing the location of the missing pets. Another version includes the name of the “suspects”.

More than two hundred people ended up being accused.

Thirty were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging, 14 women and five men.

One other man, Giles Corey, was ‘pressed’ to death for refusing to plead, and at least five people died in jail.

Spreading to nearby towns, the episode is now regarded as colonial America’s most notorious cases of mass hysteria, and remains a cautionary tale about the dangers of isolation, religious and moral extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process.

Many historians consider the lasting effects of the trials to have been highly influential in the subsequent history of the United States.

Think I’m stretching the connection too far?

Andy MacDonald/Stuff

Some Collingwood residents are keeping their cats close due to rumours a cat killer is behind a number of cats that have disappeared.

The Croydon Cat Killer is the name given to a hypothetical individual alleged to have killed, dismembered and decapitated more than 400 cats around London, beginning in 2014 in Croydon, South London.

Media reports became more and more hysterical, with many reports quoting residents saying they knew the identity of the killer or the area where they lived, based on where the dead cats were found.

Maps were produced backing up the accusations, just as they have been in Collingwood.

It all continued to escalate until 2018 when the police revealed that DNA tests on recovered cats revealed all the mutilated cats tested were the result of predating foxes, often scavenging on cats killed in vehicle collisions.

At least one expert, Richard Ward, a lecturer and historian of crime and the reporting of crime at the University of Exeter, stated his view that the Croydon Cat Killer case was an example of a “moral panic”.

The people who had been accused all fell into one category – they didn’t quite fit into society.

Let’s face it, not everyone likes cats in New Zealand, in fact they hate them.

Dr Gareth Morgan caused a so-called “uproar” in 2014 when he set up his website Cats to Go, where he called for all cats in this country to be wiped out, claiming felines were nothing more than sadistic natural-born killers that destroy native wildlife.

But it was obvious at the time that lots of people agreed with him.

Cherie Sivignon/Stuff

Collingwood has been taken by storm by allegations of a cat killer living amongst it.

It wasn’t exactly a new idea, mind you.

On southern Stewart Island at remote Port Pegasus about 15 years ago, I came across “Cat Catchers Camp”, a hut set up by the NZ Forest Service in the 1970s, to rid the area of the wild cats ahead of establishing a kakapo protection zone.

That cat killing team exterminated upwards of 400 wild cats in their time there, no sympathies included.

It’s largely thanks to their efforts that we have the nucleus of a kakapo population at all today. It is thought the very first ship-jumping cats introduced themselves into New Zealand at Port Pegasus, coming aboard sealing ships as early as 1814.

Let’s get this right. It isn’t actually illegal to kill a feral cat, just like it isn’t illegal to put down an old dog, you just can’t inflict pain or cruelty in the process, even if we do it wholesale to lots of other critters who we regard as not so cute.

Maliciously killing a domestic cat is a criminal misdemeanour punishable by a $1000 fine or a year in prison in New Zealand. Cats have the right to trespass.

So how many cats have gone missing in Collingwood?

One figure bandied about is 50 over five years, while some claim the figure is much higher.

But only one moggie who returned home from wandering and died an “agonising death” on the way to the vet appears to be the only actual cat cited as actually dying like that.

Who knows it could well have eaten rat poison, unintentionally laid for rodents? The rest appear to be anecdotally missing or unexplained disappearances. Not exactly an overwhelming case.

Weighing up all the evidence, which is little more than hearsay, I believe there is very little anyone can realistically conclude in Collingwood.

Evidence is plainly lacking even as to whether the perpetrators are human or otherwise.

And just because someone has in the past expressed their dislike for cats wiping out the local native bird population doesn’t mean they should be finger-pointed as a suspect.